V. I. Lenin

Extraordinary Plenary Meeting

Of The Moscow Soviet Of Workers’ And Red Army Deputies

April 3, 1919

Delivered:3 April, 1919First Published:Part I:PravdaNos. 76 and 77, April 9 and 10, 1919; Published according to the verbatim report; Part 2:PravdaNo. 73, April 4, 1919; Published according to thePravdatext, verified with the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, pages 255-274Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002.  Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

Report On The Domestic And Foreign Situation
Of The Soviet Republic

Comrades, I must commence my report on the domestic and foreign situation of the Soviet Republic by stating that in the coming few months, with the approach of spring, we shall again be faced with an extremely grave situation. I think that the conditions both of the Civil War and of the war against the Entente—I will deal with them when I speak of the international situation—enable us to say, even if we are very cautious, that the half-year, the middle of which we have now reached, will be the last difficult half year; the French and British capitalists will not be strong enough to launch another attack similar to the one they are now developing in full. On the other hand, all our Red Army’s achievements in the Ukraine and the Don, which we are able to consolidate, will greatly alleviate our internal situation, will provide grain and coal, food and fuel. For the time being, however, while the struggle is still going on and we are encountering enormous difficulties in collecting grain in the Ukraine with the roads now impassable owing to the spring thaw, the situation is extremely grave.

We have said more than once that the whole strength of Soviet power rests on the confidence and class-consciousness of the workers. We have more than once demonstrated that numerous as may be the enemies that surround us now, and the spies that the Entente sends into this country and who are assisted by people who are actually helping the whiteguards, probably without realising it, we have never for a moment shut our eyes to the fact that every word uttered here will be misinterpreted, that the agents of the whiteguards will carefully take note of our admissions. But we say: let them! We shall benefit far more from the straightforward and candid truth, because we are sure that although this truth is harsh, nevertheless, if it is clearly heard, every class-conscious worker, every working peasant, will draw the only correct conclusion that can be drawn from it.

In the long run, they will draw from it the only possible conclusion that our cause is close to victory all over the world, and desperately hard as the conditions of the masses of the working people may be, weary, starving and exhausted as they are by four years of imperialist war and another two years of the most frightful Civil War—grave and acute though the situation may be at the present time, we have the most serious chances of gaining victory not only in Russia, but all over the world. That is why, although the next four or five months will be very severe, we shall once again succeed in overcoming our difficulties, and thus prove to our enemies, prove to the combined capitalists of the whole world, that their attack on Russia must fail.

At the present moment they are undoubtedly operating according to a preconceived plan, making attempts in the West and the East to crush us by force of arms so as to save Krasnov’s doomed gangs. Yesterday we received news of the capture of Mariupol. Thus, Rostov is caught in a half-circle. In short, the Entente countries are exerting all their efforts to rescue Krasnov and to strike us a severe blow this very spring. They are undoubtedly operating in agreement with Hindenburg. A comrade from Latvia told us about the conditions under which our Lettish comrades are living. The greater part of the country has suffered misfortunes such as Moscow workers cannot conceive—the misfortunes of invasion and the repeated devastation of the countryside by hordes of moving troops. The Germans are now marching on Dvinsk in order to cut off Riga. In the North they are being assisted by the Estonian whiteguards using money sent by Britain, and with the aid of volunteers sent by the Swedes and Danes, who are entirely in the pay of the multimillionaires of Britain, France and America. They are operating according to a common plan which is quite clear to us; they are taking advantage of the fact that by their bloody sup pressions in Germany they have weakened the movement of the Spartacists and revolutionaries. And although they real ise that they are at their last gasp, they, nevertheless, find the situation sufficiently opportune to place some troops at Hindenburg’s disposal, to step up the attack on tormented and tortured Latvia from the west, and to threaten us. On the other band, Kolchak has achieved a series of victories in the east, and is thus paving the way for the last and most decisive onslaught of the Entente countries.

And as has always been the case, they are not confining
      themselves to an attack from without, they are operating inside
      this country by means of plots, rebellions, attempts at
      bomb-throwing and blowing up the water main in petrograd, which
      you read about in the newspapers, attempts to dismantle railway
      lines, such as those made not far from Samara, which is now the
      main line that supplies us with grain from the East. Part of
      this grain we lost; it was cap tured by Koichak. Attempts were
      made to damage the permanent way of the Kursk-Kharkov Railway,
      on which we were beginning to transport the coal the Red Army
      had recaptured in the Donets Basin. When all this is taken to
      gether, it becomes clear that the Entente countries, the French
      imperialists and multimillionaires, are making their last
      attempt to crush Soviet power by force of arms.

And the Mensheviks and the Right arid Loft Socialist
      Revolutionaries still fail to realise that the struggle is
      drawing to a close and that we are engaged in a most despe rate
      and relentless war; they continue to advocate either strikes or
      the cessation of the Civil War, which in any case is helping the
      whiteguards. I shall speak about them later on; at present I
      merely want to show that the situation i really grave.

This spring all the forces of the international capitalists want
      to fight the last battle with us. Fortunately, they are the
      forces of a decrepit, dying, hopelessly sick old
      man—international capitalism. But be that as it may, very
      big military forces have been mustered against us; Koichak, in
      particular, is now bringing up all his reserves against us, his
      gangs of volunteer whiteguards are of imposing dimensions, and
      he is receiving the assistance of Britain and America in the
      form of vast quantities of arms and munitions. That is why the
      present situation demands a clear realisation of the
      difficulties that face the Soviet Republic.

We are convinced that the masses of the working people
    understand what the war is about. They know that the next few
    months will decide the fate of our revolution, and to a large
    extent of the world revolution. They understand that the attempts
    of the capitalists to crush Soviet Russia have become so fierce,
    that they are attacking us so furiously, because they realise that
    in their own countries they are faced by the same enemy—the
    Bolshevik movement. The growth of the movement in those countries
    is equally rapid and irresistible.

Our difficulties in food and transport make our position
    particularly grave and compel us again and again to appeal for the
    aid of all class-conscious workers. For four years the transport
    system was gradually ruined by the imperialist war, and in Russia,
    a backward country, traces of this have not yet been removed, and
    it will take many months, if not years, of persevering effort to
    remove them. But it is impossible to work without fuel. Only
    lately have we begun to receive coal from the Donets Basin. You
    know that the British have robbed us of our Baku oil
    supplies. They have captured many of the ships in the Caspian Sea,
    they have occupied Grozny and are preventing us from using the
    oil. Neither industry nor the railways can work without fuel. We
    must exert our efforts to the utmost.

Once again we say to all our comrades that we must enlist
    larger forces for work on food supplies and transport. The
    transport situation is such that in Eastern Russia, beyond the
    Volga, we have accumulated millions of poods of grain10 to 20
    million poods have already been acquired and are in
    store—but cannot transport it. We lost part of this grain as
    Kolchak’s troops advanced, captured Ufa and compelled our
    forces to retreat. This loss is a very severe one, and we feel it
    very much. Transport work calls for the utmost exertion of effort;
    at every meeting the workers should ask themselves how they can
    help to improve transport. Cannot women do the work here in place
    of the men, and the men he   sent either to the repair shops or to
    help the railwaymen? The workers are the best judges of what
    should be done, because they know which men to put on which
    job. Practical people know best, and they must devise new ways and
    means of assisting. We hope, we are convinced, that our
    Commissariat of Railways, in conjunction with the Commissariat of
    Food, have already achieved a certain degree of success. No matter
    what lies our enemies may spread, this goods transport month
    during which passenger traffic is suspended has already brought
    about an improvement; but ten times more effort must be exerted to
    achieve greater success. Some figures were published in
    yesterday’s issue of Izvestia, the most important of which I
    will here quote. At the beginning of March, an average of 118
    carloads of food of which 25 consisted of grain, were arriving in
    Moscow every day. By the end of March, the average daily arrivals
    had increased to 209 carloads of food, of which 47 contained
    grain. This is an almost twofold increase. It proves that the
    stern measure of suspending passenger traffic is correct and
    justified, and shows that we have assisted the starving population
    of Moscow, Petrograd and of the whole industrial region. But this
    is by no means all that can be done. And later, when the roads
    become quite impassable, we shall be faced with a much more
    difficult and hungry time. That is why we say that in this field
    the most unrelaxing, energetic efforts must be made. Mainly, we
    must rely upon the masses of the workers and not count upon the
    intellectuals who, although they have come to work for us, have a
    large number of useless people among them.

We must also reckon with the situation in the Ukraine. During
    the year, when the entire Ukraine was occupied by the Germans, and
    the whole of the Don region was in a sorry state, we suffered a
    great deal. Now, however, our position is improving. In the
    Ukraine there are 258 million poods of grain, of which 100 million
    have already been earmarked for delivery. But the whole trouble is
    that the Ukrainian peasants have been frightfully intimidated by
    the Germans and by German looting. I have heard that the peasants
    there have been so intimidated by the Germans that although they
    know what the position of the Soviet Power is here, they still
    hesitate to seize the landed estates.

    Meanwhile, the time is approaching for spring field work; but
    the Ukrainian peasants have suffered the horrors of German looting
    to such an extent that to this day they are extremely
    irresolute. I must say that guerrilla warfare has been going on
    there all the time. In the South it is still going on. There are
    no regular troops there, owing to which complete victory has not
    yet been won. We have moved our regular troops in, but this is not
    enough. We must greatly intensify our efforts, and that is why I
    insist that at every meeting of workers the question of food
    supplies and the question of transport definitely must be
    raised. In the very near future we have to decide the question of
    how to relieve the situation, and how to utilise what is now
    available.

We must bear firmly in mind that only with the aid of the
    forces of the working class can we stand firmly on our feet, and
    achieve our brilliant victories; and that is why we must send the
    best forces of the proletariat to the front. We must send leading
    functionaries to the front and if some office suffers as a result
    of it, we shall, of course, sustain some loss, but it will not be
    fatal. If there is a shortage of workers in the army, however,
    that will certainly be fatal. A defect in our army up to now has
    been that it lacks cohesion and is not sufficiently organised; all
    help in this sphere must come from the workers, and on them we
    must place all our hopes. Only those workers who have gone through
    the whole struggle, who can relate all their experiences and all
    they have suffered can influence the army and turn the peasants
    into the politically-conscious fighters that we need.

That is why we have come here again and decided to call you all
    together to inform you of the serious state of our transport
    system, due to the general grave position that we are in. We
    stress the importance of our holding out for another three or four
    months, and that only then will complete victory be ours. But for
    this we need forces. Where are these forces to be found? Is it not
    clear that only the workers, those who have borne the whole burden
    of the chaos, bore the whole burden when the struggle changed to
    whiteguard invasions and thereby acquired great
    experience—is it not clear that only these workers, only
    these vanguard contingents, can help us? We know perfectly well
    that they are terribly exhausted, that they are worn out by the
    superhuman efforts they are called upon to make. We know all this,
    but nevertheless, we now say to you here that we must strain every
    nerve, we must concentrate our minds on rallying all forces to
    achieve a brilliant victory for the revolution. We are now
    entering the most difficult, the most trying period, and we must
    act like revolutionaries. We must recruit our forces from the
    masses of the working people.

Yesterday a meeting was held of the influential leaders f the
    trade union movement—both the Moscow and the national
    leaders. And at this meeting everybody agreed that it is
    necessary, at the present moment, to enlist for this work the
    middle stratum of workers, whom everybody has up to now regarded
    as being incapable of this type of work. Now, however, it is
    perfectly clear that we must send this middle stratum to relieve
    our exhausted functionaries. Before doing so, however, those who
    have been engaged in this work up to now must instruct the
    newcomers. We must husband our forces, and for a time we must send
    the middle stratum of workers to take the place of our leading
    functionaries. We must send tens of thousands of such workers into
    the field. We must not be afraid that they will not do the work as
    well as the experienced functionaries did. If we put them into
    responsible positions, then the mistakes that they may make at
    first will not have serious consequences. The important thing for
    us is to put them in the foremost responsible posts.There they
    will be able to exert an effort and develop their activities,
    because they will be able to operate confidently, they will know
    that they are backed by experienced leading workers who have
    already had a year’s experience of work in Russia. They will
    know that at critical moments these more experienced comrades will
    come to their aid and ease their task. This new stratum of workers
    will be able to do their work well if the advanced workers promote
    them to leading positions. We can do this without causing any
    damage, because this large stratum has a proletarian instinct, a
    proletarian understanding and sense of duty. We may rely upon it,
    and we may say that it will help us in a time of difficulty. It is
    a specific feature of Russia that in every critical situation she
    has always been able to find masses of people who could be moved
    forward, who Were a reserve in which she could find new forces
    when the old forces began to grow thin. Yes, the advanced workers
    are overtired, and the next contingent will not do the work so
    well; but that is not disastrous, we shall not suffer from it, we
    shall not ruin our cause if we send these new forces into the
    field, guide them, and not allow our cause to die.

Under these circumstances I must speak about the
    Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Lately, the Soviet
    government has begun to close down their newspapers and to arrest
    them. Some worker comrades, seeing this, say: “So those
    Bolsheviks”—I among that number—“who
    induced us to make certain concessions to the petty-bourgeois
    democrats were wrong. What was the use of making these concessions
    if we must now close down their newspapers and arrest them? Is
    this consistency?”

My answer is this. In a country like Russia, where agriculture
    is concentrated in the hands of the petty-bourgeois elements, we
    cannot hold out for long without the support of this
    petty-bourgeois stratum. At the present time, this stratum is
    marching towards the goal not by a straight road, but in
    zigzags. If I am pursuing an enemy who is retreating not by a
    straight road but in zigzags, then I, too, must proceed in zigzags
    in order to overtake him. To speak in the language of politics,
    the petty-bourgeois masses stand between labour and capital, and
    these masses must be beaten a hundred times to make them
    understand that the alternative is either the dictatorship of the
    bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the working class. Those who
    are aware of this, understand the present situation. The workers
    understand it. Experience and a whole series of observations have
    taught them that only one or the other of these two systems of
    government is possible—either the absolute power of the
    working class, or the absolute power of the
    bourgeoisie—there can be no middle, or third, course. The
    working class learned this long ago from its strike and
    revolutionary struggle. The petty bourgeoisie cannot learn this at
    once; hundreds of everyday facts have failed to teach and accustom
    the petty bourgeoisie to this idea, and they continue to dream of
    uniting with the big bourgeoisie; for they cannot understand that
    either the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of
    the bourgeoisie is inevitable.

Experience of Koichak taught the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
    Mensheviks that it was no accident that in the midst of a furious
    and desperate struggle conducted with foreign assistance,
    democracy had nothing to give. Two forces are operating upon
    them—and there are no other forces but these—either
    the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or the power and complete
    dictatorship of the working class; no middle course was ever of
    any use, nothing came of it anywhere. Nor did anything come of the
    Constituent Assembly. This the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
    Menshievjks and the petty bourgeoisie learned from their own
    experience.

When the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks said:
    “We shall abandon Koichak and all those who support him and
    the intervention of the Entente,” it was not only
    hypocrisy. It was not only a political ruse, although some of
    these people did think they would fool the Bolsheviks and get an
    opportunity to play the old game again. We saw through this ruse
    arid, of course, took measures against it. But when the Mensheviks
    and Socialist-Revolutionaries said this, it was not only hypocrisy
    and cunning; many of them did itin good faith.Among
    them there is not only the group of writers, but also a
    petty-bourgeois stratum of technicians, engineers, and so
    forth. When the Mensheviks announced that they were opposed to the
    intervention of the Entente, we Invited them to work with us, and
    they willingly accepted our invitation. But now we are quite right
    in persecuting them, persecuting the petty-bourgeois stratum,
    because this stratum is extremely obtuse. This was revealed in the
    Kerensky period and also by their present conduct. When they came
    to work for us they said they had abandoned politics, and would
    work willingly. We told them in reply that we needed Menshevik
    officials, because they were not embezzlers of state funds, and
    not Black Hundreds who worm their way into our ranks, call
    themselves Communists and do us mischief. If these people believe
    in the Constituent Assembly we tell them to go on believing, not
    only in the Constituent Assembly, but even in God, but do their
    work properly and keep out of politics. An increasing number of
    them realise that they have disgraced themselves in politics. They
    howled that Soviet power was a monstrous invention, possible only
    in barbarous Russia. They said that the dissolution of the
    Constituent Assembly was an act by barbarians whom tsarism had
    produced. And this was repeated in Europe. Now news comes from
    Europe that Soviet power is coming to take the place of bourgeois
    Constituent Assemblies all over the world. These are lessons that
    are being taught to all intellectuals who come to work for us. We
    now have twice as many civil servants working for us as we had six
    months ago. We have gained by accepting these civil servants who
    do their work better than Black Hundreds. When we invited them to
    come to work for us they said they were afraid of Kolchak, they
    preferred us, but would not help us, they said they would talk
    like pure parliamentarians, just as if they were sitting in a
    Constituent Assembly; and we shouldn’t dare to touch them,
    because they were democrats. But we say to these groups who talk
    about the Constituent Assembly that if they talk like that much
    longer we shall pack them off to Koichak and to
    Georgia. (Applause.) Polemics are started, and the opposition of a
    legal group takes shape. We shall allow no opposition. The
    imperialists of the whole world have got us by the throat, they
    are trying to defeat us by all the force of an armed attack and we
    must fight a life-and-death struggle. If you have come here to
    help us, then do so, but if you are going to publish newspapers
    and incite the workers to strike, and these strikes cause the
    death of our Red Army men at the front, and every day of a strike
    causes tens of thousands of our factory workers to suffer
    privations, pangs of hunger—the pangs which are causing us
    so much concernthen you may be right from the Constituent Assembly
    point of view, but from the standpoint of our struggle and the
    responsibility we bear, you are wrong, you cannot help us, so get
    out, go to Georgia, go to Kolchak, or else you will go to
    prison. And that is what we shall do with them.

Comrades, I hope we shall all unanimously adopt the resolution
    to be submitted to you at the end of the meeting. In it we have
    endeavoured to formulate the necessary instructions, the reasons
    for which I have given in my report.I should now like to deal with
    two questions—the position of the middle peasants, and the
    international situation, which is extremely important.

We discussed the question of the middle peasants at our Party
    Congress and decided on the line our Party should pursue towards
    them. Our Party elected to a responsible posts the post of
    Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, a post
    which is all the more responsible for the fact that until recently
    it was occupied by that exceptionally talented organiser Comrade
    Sverdlov, for this post our Party chose Comrade Kalinin, a
    St. Petersburg worker who still has connections with the rural
    districts. There is a report in the newspapers today that a
    certain Comrade Kalinin was assassinated by the
    Socialist-Revolutionaries, but it is not this Kalinin. This shows
    what methods the Socialist-Revolutionaries resort to. Comrade
    Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin is a middle peasant from Tver Gubernia,
    which he visits every year. The middle peasants constitute the
    largest stratum of the population, and their numbers have
    increased since our revolution owing to the fact that we abolished
    the landed estates. The peasantry benefited by our revolution
    because they seized all the landed estates and, as a consequence,
    the number of middle peasants greatly increased. If there is
    discontent among the middle peasants, we say that it is caused
    from above, and we must ascertain to what extent it is legitimate,
    considering our lack of forces. You, here in the capital, know how
    difficult it is to combat bureaucracy and red tape. We are obliged
    to employ the old civil servants because no other are
    available. They must be re-educated, taught; but this takes
    time. We may appoint new workers to responsible posts in the food
    supply organisations, but there is still an exceedingly large
    number of old civil servants in the State Control Commission, and
    we suffer from red tape and bureaucracy. We are trying to appoint
    new workers to take part in control in the Commissariat of
    Railways and to work side by side with the experts. This is the
    way we are combating bureaucracy and red tape. What effort it
    costs, even here in Moscow! And what is going on in the rural
    districts? There, people who call themselves members of the Party
    are often scoundrels, whose lawlessness is most brazen. And how
    often we have to contend with inexperienced people, who confuse
    the kulaks with the middle peasants! A kulak is one who lives on
    the labour of others, who robs others of the fruits of their
    labour, arid takes advantage of their poverty. The middle peasants
    do not exploit others and are not exploited themselves; they earn
    their livelihood on their small farms by their own labour. Not a
    single socialist in the world ever proposed that the small farmer
    should be deprived of his property. The small farmer will exist
    for many years to come. No decrees will have any effect here; we
    must. wait until the peasants have learned to be guided by
    experience. When they see that collective farming is far better,
    they will come over to our side. We must win their
    confidence. Here we must wage a struggle against abuses. We can
    fight only with the aid of the urban workers, because they have
    close connections with the peasants, and they can supply us with
    hundreds of thousands of functionaries. We know perfectly well
    that no appointments of comrades to high posts, no circulars, and
    no decrees will be of any avail, and that the workers of every
    group, of every circle, must set to work themselves—they
    have special connections with the rural districts.

I said that the first rule for the workers must be—exert
    all efforts to help to prosecute the war. The second rule should
    be—help the middle peasants by keeping in contact with them,
    so as not to allow a single serious enemy attack in the rural
    districts to go unpunished. We must point out that the urban
    workers are bringing assistance to the middle peasants, their
    comrades, because the middle peasants are also workers, but
    workers who have been reared under other conditions, who live
    isolated from each other in rural ignorance from which it is more
    difficult forthem to extricate themselves. And we must know that
    the perseverance of our comrades will establish contacts with the
    middle peasants. An infinitesimal number of peasants will become
    kulaks, will foment rebellion—that we know. That being the
    case, how can we help, how can we win the confidence of the middle
    peasants, how can we help them to combat all sorts of abuses? If
    we have done little in this field it is not our fault, for we had
    to fight the bourgeoisie. This has to be realised. Every worker
    must put the question this way—we, the workers as a whole,
    have contacts with the middle peasants, and we will utilise these
    contacts, and see to it that every middle peasant learns of our
    help not only from the appointment of Comrade Kalinin, but also
    from the fact that he is obtaining some real assistance, if only
    slight, if only in the form of slight but comradely advice. The
    peasants will now appreciate such assistance more than anything
    else. They must be made to understand why the difficulties of our
    position prevent us from giving them the assistance they need,
    assistance in the form of urban culture. The peasants need
    city-made goods, urban culture, and we must give them these
    things. Only when the proletariat gives the peasants this form of
    assistance will they realise that the help of the workers is
    different from that of the exploiters. To help the peasants to
    rise to the urban level—this is the task that every worker
    who has connections with the rural districts must set himself. The
    urban workers must say to themselves that now, in the spring, when
    the food situation has become particularly acute, they must go to
    the peasants’ assistance. And if everybody does even a tiny
    share of this work, we shall see that our edifice has not merely a
    façade, and that our cause of safeguarding Soviet power will be
    achieved; for the peasants say: “Long live Soviet power,
    long live the Bolsheviks, but down with the communia!” They
    curse the “communia” that is being organised in a
    stupid way and forced upon them. They are suspicious of everything
    that is forced upon them, and quite rightly so. We must go to the
    middle peasants, we must help them, teach them, but only in the
    field of science and socialism. In the field of agriculture we
    must learn from them. There you have the task that confronts us
    directly.

We now come to the international situation. I say that the
    imperialists of Britain, France and America are making their last
    attempt to bring us to our knees, but they will fail. Difficult as
    the situation is, we can say with confidence that we shall defeat
    international imperialism. We shall defeat the multimillionaires
    of the whole world. There are two reasons why we shall beat
    them. First, because they are WII d beasts who are so absorbed in
    fighting among themselves, that they continue to bite each other
    and fail to see that they are on the brink of a precipice;
    secondly, because Soviet power is growing uninterruptedly all over
    the world. Not a day passes but what we read about this in the
    newspapers. Today we read a message wirelessed from an American
    press office in Lyons to the effect that the Committee of Ten has
    now been reduced, and that there are now only four—Wilson,
    Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando. These are the leaders of
    four nations, but even they cannot reach an agreement. Britain and
    America do not want France to have the coal profits. They are wild
    beasts who have plundered the whole world and are now quarrelling
    over the prey. These four men have shut themselves up in close
    conclave so that, God forbid, rumours may not get about—they
    are all such great democrats—but they themselves set rumours
    afloat by sending out wireless messages about not agreeing to give
    up the coal profits. A French comrade who saw the French prisoners
    of war told me that these prisoners say: “We were told that
    we must go to Russia to fight the Germans because the Germans had
    destroyed our country. But now there is an armistice with Germany;
    whom are we going to fight?” They were not told a word about
    that. The number of people who are asking themselves this question
    is day by day growing into millions and millions. These people
    have experienced the horrors of the imperialist war, and they say:
    “What are we going to fight for?” In the past, the
    Bolsheviks taught them what they were fighting for in underground
    leaflets; but now the imperialists send out wireless messages
    saying that Britain does not agree to allow France to have the
    coal profits. Thus, as a French journalist expressed it, they are
    rushing from room to room in a vain effort to solve the
    problem. They are trying to decide who should get most, and they
    have been fighting each other for five months. These wild beasts
    have lost their self-control, and will go on fighting until
    nothing is left of them except their tails. And we say that our
    international position, which at first was so precarious that they
    could have crushed us in several weeks, is now, when they are
    quarrelling over the loot and are beginning to fly at each
    others’ throats—now our position is much better. They
    promised the soldiers that if they conquered Germany they would
    receive untold benefits. They are arguing whether to compel
    Germany to pay sixty or eighty milliard. This is an extremely
    important question of principle, an extremely interesting one,
    especially if the workers or peasants are told about it. But if
    they go on arguing for long they will not get even one
    milliard. This is what is most interesting!

That is why we say, without exaggerating in the least, not even
    as socialists, but simply and soberly weighing up the forces that
    are mustered against us, that the position of the Soviet Republic
    is improving day by day and hour by hour. Our enemies cannot agree
    among themselves. Five months have passed since they won their
    victory, but they have not concluded peace. Recently, the French
    Chamber again voted hundreds of millions for war
    preparations. They are digging their own grave, and there are
    people over there who will lower them into this grave and pile
    plenty of earth over them. (Applause.) This is because the Soviet
    movement is growing in all countries. And the Hungarian revolution
    has shown that when we say that we are fighting not only for
    ourselves, but for Soviet power all over the world, that blood of
    the Red Army men is being shed not only for the sake of our
    starving comrades, but for the victory of Soviet power all over
    the world—the example of Hungary has shown that this is not
    merely prophecies and promises, but the most actual and immediate
    reality.

In Hungary the revolution was most unusual in form. The
    Hungarian Kerensky, who over there is called Kdrolyi, voluntarily
    resigned, and the Hungarian compromisers—the Mensheviks and
    Socialist-Revolutionaries—realised that they must go to the
    prison where our Hungarian comrade Bela Kun, one of the best of
    the Hungarian Communists, was confined. They went to him and said:
    “You must take power!” (Applause.) The bourgeois
    government resigned. The bourgeois socialists, the Hungarian
    Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries, merged with the Hungarian
    Bolshevik Party and formed a united party and a united
    government. Comrade B61a Kun, our comrade, and a Communist who had
    trodden the whole practical path of Bolshevism in Russia, said to
    me when I spoke to him by wireless: “I have not got a
    majority in the government, but I shall win because the masses are
    behind me, and we are convening a congress of Soviets.” This
    is a revolution of world—historical importance.

Up to now all the European workers have been told lies about
    Soviet Russia. They have been told that there is no government but
    sheer anarchy in Russia. The Bolsheviks are just a crowd of
    quarrelsome people. Recently, the French Minister, Pichon, said
    about Soviet Russia, “It is anarchy, they are violators,
    usurpers!” “Look at Russia,” said the Gerluau
    Mensheviks to their workers. “War, famine and ruin!

    Is this the sort of socialism you want?” And in this way
    they have been intimidating the workers. But Hungary was a example
    of a revolution born in a different way. Hungary will undoubtedly
    have to go through a severe struggle against the
    bourgeoisie—that is inevitable. But the fact is that when
    those beasts, the British and French imperialists, foresaw the
    possibility of revolution in Hungary they wanted to crush it, to
    prevent its birth. The difficulty of our position was that we had
    to give birth to Soviet power in opposition to patriotism. We had
    to break down this patriotism and conclude the Brest peace. This
    was a most desperate, furious and sanguinary operation. The
    bourgeoisie in the neighbouring countries realised who would have
    to govern. Who, if not the Soviet? It was like the old days when
    kings, kinglets and princes saw that their power was waning and
    they said, “We must have a constitution; let the bourgeoisie
    come and govern!” And if the king was feeble, he was given a
    pension, or a sinecure. What the kings or kinglets experienced
    fifty or sixty years ago, the world bourgeoisie is now
    experiencing. When the British and French imperialists submitted
    unprecedented demands to the Hungarian capitalists, the latter
    said, “We cannot fight. The people will not follow us; but
    we are Hungarian patriots and we want to resist. What kind of
    government should we have? A Soviet government.” The
    Hungarian bourgeoisie admitted to the world that it had resigned
    voluntarily and that the only power in the world capable of
    guiding the nation in a moment of crisis was Soviet
    power. (Applause.) That is why the Hungarian revolution, owing to
    its having been born in a totally different way from ours, will
    reveal to the whole world that which was concealed in
    Russia—i.e., that Bolshevism is bound up with a new,
    proletarian, workers’ democracy, that is taking the place of
    the old parliament. Time was when the workers were deceived and
    enslaved by capital. Today, world Soviet power is coming into
    being to take the place of the old bourgeois parliament; and this
    Soviet power has won the sympathies of all workers because it is
    the power of ,the working people, the power of millions who rule
    and govern themselves. Perhaps they govern badly, as we do in
    Russia, but our conditions are exceedingly difficult. In a country
    where the bourgeoisie will not offer such furious resistance, the
    tasks of the Soviet government will be easier; it will he able to
    operate without the violence, without the bloodshed that was
    forced upon us by the Kerenskys and the imperialists. We shall
    reach our goal even by this, more difficult, road. Russia may have
    to make greater sacrifices than other countries; this is not
    surprising considering the chaos that we inherited. Other
    countries will travel by a different, more humane road, but at the
    end of it lies the same Soviet power. That is why the example of
    Hungary is of decisive importance.

People learn from experience. It is impossible to prove merely
    by words that Soviet power is just. The example of Rusia alone was
    not sufficiently intelligible to the workers of all
    countries. They knew that there was a Soviet there, they were all
    in favour of the Soviet, but they were daunted by the horrors of
    the sanguinary struggle. The example of Hungary will be decisive
    for the proletarian masses, for the European proletariat and
    working peasants. In a moment of difficulty there is no one to
    rule the country but the Soviet government.

We remember what old people say, “The children have,
    grown up, they have made their way in the world, now we can
    die.” But we do not intend to die. We are marching to
    victory. But when we see children like Hungary, where Soviet power
    already exists, we say that we have done our work not only on a
    Russian, but also on an international scale; that we shall
    surmount all our desperate difficulties and win full victory, so
    that we shall live to see the day when the world Soviet republic
    will be added to the Russian and the Hungarian Soviet
    Republics. (Applause.)

Resolution On The Report On The Domestic And Foreign Situation Of The Soviet Republic

The Soviet Republic, in the harsh but glorious struggle it is
      waging at the head of all peoples, is entering the most
      difficult period of its existence. The next few months will be
      months of crisis. The Entente is making its last, desperate
      effort to crush us by force of arms. The food situation is
      becoming extremely acute. The transport system is in a serious
      state.

Only the greatest effort can save us. Victory is nevertheless
    fully possible. The revolution in Hungary provides conclusive
    proof of the rapid growth of the Soviet movement in Europe, and of
    its impending victory. We have more allies in all countries than
    we ourselves imagine. To achieve the final victory we must hold on
    for another four or five months, which, perhaps, will be the
    bitterest and most dangerous. And in days like these, reckless men
    and adventurers who call themselves Mensheviks and Left and Right
    Socialist-Revolutionaries, while paying lip-service to Soviet
    power and protesting against the armed intervention of the
    Entente, are fomenting strikes or agitating for concessions to
    freedom to trade or for the cessation of the Civil War, forgetting
    that we have offered peace to all, and that our war is a just,
    legitimate and unavoidable war of defence. Obviously, by this sort
    of agitation they give most active and effective assistance to the
    whiteguards, who are making a last effort to force us into
    disaster. The meeting condemns these masked enemies of the
    people.

It declares to all those Mensheviks and
    Socialist-Revolutionaries who are really prepared to help us in
    our difficult struggle, that the workers’ and
    peasants’ government will grant them full liberty, and
    guarantee them all the rights of citizens of the Soviet
    Republic.

This meeting declares that the task of the Soviet Government at
    the present time is to wage relentless war upon those Mensheviks
    and Socialist-Revolutionaries who, like the literary and political
    groups,Vsegda VperyodandDyelo
    Naroda,are actually impeding our struggle and are the
    allies of our inveterate enemies. This meeting calls upon all
    working-class organisations, all proletarians, and all working
    peasants to exert every effort to repel the enemies of Soviet
    power, to defend that power and to improve the food supply and
    transport systems.

For this purpose, this meeting deems it necessary:

(1) To enlist members of the middle section—i.e., people
    who are less experienced than the advanced workers and
    peasants—to replace the weary advanced section.

(2) To engage still further contingents of the advanced and
    other sections of workers on food supplies, transport, and in the
    army.

(3) To enlist the largest possible number of politically
    conscious workers and peasants to work at the People’s
    Commissariat of Railways and at the State Control Commission, in
    order to improve the functioning of these bodies and to eliminate
    bureaucracy and red tape.

(4) To transfer the largest possible number of people from the
    starving cities to agricultural work in the rural
    districts—to vegetable gardens, to the Ukraine, to the Don
    region, and so forth, so as to increase the output of grain and
    other agricultural produce.

(5) To exert all efforts to help the middle peasants, to put a
    stop to the abuses from which they suffer so often, and to render
    them comradely assistance. Those Soviet officials who fail to
    understand this policy—which is the only correct
    policy—or who are unable to pursue it, must be immediately
    dismissed.

(6) The task that confronts everybody at the present time is to
    combat all signs of weariness, faint-heartedness and
    vacillation. We must imbue all hearts with courage and firmness,
    increase political consciousness, and strengthen comradely
    discipline.

The working class and the peasantry of Russia have borne
    incredible burdens. During the past few months their sufferings
    have been more acute than ever. But this meeting declares that the
    will of the workers is not broken, that the working class is still
    at its post, that it is convinced that it will overcome all
    difficulties, and that it will maintain at all costs the victory
    of the Soviet Socialist Republic in Russia, and throughout the
    world.